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ICANN says no to .mail, .home and .corp, offers refund

Domain system overseer gives final thumbs down to three top level domains.

ICANN’s board has passed a resolution confirming that it will not delegate the .mail, .home and .corp strings as part of 2012 round of new top level domain name expansion, and has authorized a full refund for companies that applied for these strings.

The strings were shelved due to concerns about name collisions. Lots of internal networks used these extensions, and setting them live in the DNS could cause issues.

While other strings also had issues of name collisions, they were not at the level of these three strings. All new top level domains had to institute mitigation periods to alert people who were using strings that are now top level domains. But that wouldn’t be enough for .home, .mail and .corp, the board has concluded.

The $185,000 refund will come as little consolation to some of the applicants. These are arguably some of the best strings. Also, one applicant invested heavily trying to game the system for .home…but I won’t feel too sorry for them.